


Now

by DameRuth



Series: Bliss [10]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: The TARDIS, as I envison her, is a very odd entity; here, she has a philosophical chat, I guess you could call it, with Bliss!Nine.[Continuing with the Teaspoon copypasta project - originally posted 2007.06.29, and dang, check out that author's note - does anyone even remember "Legend of the Seeker" any more??]
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Bliss [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078
Kudos: 18





	Now

**Author's Note:**

> Fans of Bliss!Nine will no doubt enjoy the pics of CE as the evil Rider in the upcoming _The Dark Is Rising_ movie. My hopes for the movie as an adaptation of the book are not high, but the, er, visuals look marvelous. This slightly shaggier look is closer to what I envision for Bliss!Nine than the _Invisible Circus_ shots, FWIW . . . though the rather fetishistic leather clothing seems more in line with something Jack would like. ;)

Time Lords didn’t need much sleep, but humans did, so the Doctor was finding himself spending more time in bed of late.  
  
Rose and Jack found it easiest to fall sleep when he was there, so he’d managed to work his sleep cycle around to a point where he was sleeping an hour or so every “night.” That allowed him to go to bed with the two humans regularly, and fall asleep with them. It served the needs of their empathic link, which benefited from them sharing unguarded physical and mental contact . . . and, the Doctor admitted to himself, he really did find the time spent curled up with two warm human bodies to be remarkably pleasant. Whether or not there were extracurricular activities involved.  
  
There he was, the last of the Time Lords — gone native, finally, with his favorite alien species. The Council would have had fifty fits. Now, though, there was nobody but himself who even remembered the Council.  
  
Well, one other . . . who was humming softly all around them.  
  
Rose and Jack were still in light REM sleep, their memories and synapses rearranging and renewing themselves though the necessary “housekeeping” work of dreaming. The humans were about two hours along, now, and would shortly drop off into deeper, heavy-resting sleep. One nice side benefit of the link was a tendency towards synchronization in such things.  
  
When they wouldn’t be as easily disturbed by his movements, the Doctor would wriggle out from between them, and begin his nightly roaming through the TARDIS — maybe working on the neverending job of timeship upkeep, maybe reading in the Library, maybe poking about in corners to see what he’d stashed away and forgotten about. It was his own time to spend, and much as he loved the humans he traveled with, the essentially solitary nature of a Time Lord needed some independence to be happy.  
  
Still, it was pleasant to be lying here, sandwiched between Rose’s soft warmth and Jack’s more aggressive body heat. Their young, vital bodies warmed his old bones to a degree he wouldn’t have thought possible once upon a time, back when he still cared about questions of propriety.  
  
He sopped up the shared warmth, freely given and gratefully received, and “listened” to the others dreaming. Jack’s half of the link seemed to echo with half-heard whispers, sometimes a monologue, sometimes a veritable chorus, but all in Jack’s own internal “voice.” Rose, in contrast, dreamed great, slow ripples of color -- a mental aurora, sweeping curtains of mostly cool tones brightened by flashes of sharply contrasting warmer hues. Their dreams calmed him, and, in turn, his presence soothed them, keeping nightmares and tension dreams at bay. Symbiosis in action.  
  
The Doctor let himself drift into a meditative state. It was a beautiful, perfect moment . . .  
  
And it couldn’t last.  
  
The faint twinge of disquiet echoed through Rose’s and Jack’s dreams. They both moaned in their throats, wriggling closer to him, instinctively seeking comfort, sharing even more warmth.  
  
He frowned, unconsciously, carefully closing down his portion of the link, and the humans relaxed again, their dreams easing back into peace, heartbeats slowing.  
  
Two single hearts, beating firm and strong . . . but quickly, so quickly. Warmth shared — as a result of racing metabolisms, bodies that burned themselves up in a few short decades, rather than holding banked embers alive for centuries.  
  
The Doctor’s breath hissed out between his clenched teeth, and he tried to recapture his earlier, thoughtless peace, but couldn’t. Annoyed, he tried to deepen his meditative state and find ease there, with no luck . . .  
  
But his efforts were noticed, and responded to.  
  
From the bottom of his mind, coiling threads of golden light unfurled, twining up through his thoughts like growing ivy, or an anemone’s tendrils. They were in constant motion, forever coiling and uncoiling, shedding bits of themselves like fire-sparks, spiralling down into fractal intricacy, patterns far finer than anything the Doctor’s mind could resolve or understand, before exploding back outward in an exuberance of glittering new growth . . .  
  
The TARDIS — and far more alert than usual. A TARDIS was, by nature, a passive thing, contemplative and obedient . . . until roused. She’d been humming happily along, enjoying the feeling of her crew cradled peacefully in a pocket of her infolded reality — until the Doctor had broken the mood.  
  
She sang a question at him, and he responded with an apology . . . which was not exactly the answer she’d been seeking.  
  
More tendrils coiled around his mind, investigating, and he let them go where they would. After nine hundred years, he and the TARDIS were well-acquainted; he had no secrets from her . . . though he was well aware she had plenty of her own secrets — things he wouldn’t understand even if she shared them.  
  
Being bonded to a TARDIS was to be forever invaded by and intertwined with alienness, in the most intimate terms possible — down to the level of every thought, every cell, thanks to the Rassilon Imprimatur that made mastery of a timeship possible.  
  
But that mastery was a two-way street. Time Lords had been known to go mad from it — and anyone who managed to survive the harsh selection imposed by the Academy had to be particularly sane by nature to avoid being broken along the way. Either that, or they were mad already . . .  
  
The Doctor had never had trouble with aliens, or alienness — witness his current sleeping arrangements. He’d bonded immediately with his timeship, even though she hadn’t exactly been his, and the method of his claiming her hadn’t been all that orthodox. No proper ceremony, not even a proper analysis of compatibility, just the sheerest chance of finding an older piece of equipment unguarded and available . . .  
  
_Chance_ , the TARDIS hummed in response, _chance isn’t._ She rarely used language, but now she communicated in Gallifreyan, the only language appropriate for the concepts she expressed. She seemed amused.  
  
More tendrils wove through his thoughts. It might have been exquisitely painful if the Doctor had been inclined to resist, but, because he had no fear, the sensation was merely a little tickly.  
  
_You cannot grieve for now. Now is always,_ she pointed out, utterly reasonable by TARDIS standards.  
  
The Doctor sighed, half rueful and half affectionate. Direct communication with a TARDIS was a wonderful way for even a perfectly sane Time Lord to end up with the desire to beat his head against a wall in frustration. The perceptions necessary to exist as both a self-contained pocket universe _and_ as a discrete point traveling through the Vortex of time and space tended to make grammar . . . inadequate.  
  
_Now changes,_ he responded, trying to put his sorrow for the future, and his inevitable loss, into terms she might understand.  
  
_Of course. But it is eternal._  
  
_My eternity is different than yours._  
  
_Every eternity is different,_ the TARDIS responded equably. _But they are all now._  
  
_Never mind. Thank you for being concerned, though._  
  
_No need for thanks. You are my Doctor,_ the timeship responded, and the Doctor shivered a little. Three alien entities, all bound to him by choice, all speaking to him in the same terms of ownership and belonging — it was . . . strange. Wonderful, in its own way. Rare and flattering, like having a butterfly alight trustingly on one’s hand for no reason whatsoever . . .  
  
And just as ephemeral in the end.  
  
_You think too much,_ the TARDIS told him, severely. _You all do, always. But they are more ‘now’ than you. You should listen to them more._  
  
The Doctor reflected that there was nothing quite like having one’s own stated “here and now” philosophy tossed back at one by a mind that understood the concept more fully than he ever could.  
  
_You are limited,_ the TARDIS told him, laughing in agreement, _but you are mine. I would see you happy. You can be. When you are in this now, you are happy — and even when you are ‘now’ somewhere else, and sad, you are still here, if you only realized it. Always._ The last word was not spoken, but sung as a chord, full of affection.  
  
A TARDIS routinely maintained several independent and parallel lines of consciousness — each devoted to understanding some layer of the Vortex, managing the intricately shifting origami-folds of the ship’s internal dimensions, or running some aspect of the many mechanical systems, all simultaneously. In addition to the strand of the TARDIS’s conscious thought that had been speaking to him, others were taking notice and chiming in as much as they had attention for, adding harmonies, and counterpoints.  
  
_Conceptual difficulties, sorry,_ the Doctor thought back, resigned. It _would_ be nice to blank out the past and the future, but he couldn’t — especially since the Game Station had given him a foretaste of the future. Jack and Rose gone, the link sundered, everything gone . . .  
  
_You pick a lousy ‘now’ to be in,_ the TARDIS observed, exasperated, more than one voice-thread joining in. She dug her tendrils deeply into his mind and gave him an annoyed little shake — the merest exertion of her strength -- that would have rattled his teeth if it had been physical. _You could be with your body in that ‘now,’ rather than here in this one, mourning._ She ‘dropped’ him suddenly with a carefully-calculated thump; enough to startle without harming.  
  
Right then, she sounded more than a little like Rose, and the Doctor was reminded that his TARDIS, out of all the TARDISes that had ever existed, knew what it was like to actually be human. For a brief moment, she’d experienced the outer world through a creature that lived in the flow of linear time.  
  
_You have lots of ‘now’ to choose from. You make it from yourself. If you make it right, it will never go away,_ the TARDIS told him. _Think about it._ Oddly, she sounded more like Jack than Rose on those final words.  
  
The tendrils tightened momentarily, affectionately . . . then disintegrated explosively into wisps of golden vapor, whisking off to re-form themselves elsewhere, in another moment of Time.  
  
The Doctor was suddenly alone again — well, as alone as he could be with two humans sleeping against him, and a sentient timeship wrapped around them all. The TARDIS was back to dreaming her own dreams, her attention vague and distant as she approximated an inanimate machine once more.  
  
The Doctor stared up at the ceiling for a moment. Rose shifted, and he rolled his head to look at her. Her hair was falling in her face, so he reached over and brushed it back behind her ear. Then he followed with a kiss to the smooth skin of her forehead, his lips lingering on the warmth.  
  
Rose smiled without waking. ( _Doctor_ ), her thoughts whispered, even in her dream, and Jack, sharing the link, smiled in unison with her.  
  
She twitched slightly, then dropped off into deeper sleep, followed a few seconds later by Jack, their trust and relaxation perfect and undisturbed.  
  
The Doctor considered getting up . . . but, mindful of his ship’s advice, elected to stay where he was for a bit more. It was a ‘now’ worth making real for a little longer, to stand against the other nows that were to come.  
  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=13542>


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